


1869.

by megpeggs



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: F/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23329171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megpeggs/pseuds/megpeggs
Summary: James A. Hamilton walks through the halls of the home he built and spent majority of his life in with his family. During his little walk he finds something special.---A story focusing on Jemmy A. because I can't think of other stuff.
Relationships: James A. Hamilton/Mary Morris Hamilton
Kudos: 7





	1869.

"Nevis" seemed like a foreign place. Like a huge house full with rooms and furniture and yet it was so empty. Like it wasn't the house he'd built for his family 34 years ago and that he'd lived in with his family for those 34 years. Like it wasn't the place of so many family dinners with his brothers and their family. It felt like a foreign place. As if he is walking over those floors for the first time.   
He stopped at the entry to the drawing room. Fine decorated, tidy, and a little old-fashioned. Looking around the room, memories sparkled up in his mind. Memories he had forgotten existed over the years. He saw himself with his children, playing around and being silly. He saw Christmas celebrations and the family cuddling comfortably on the sofa. But he also saw her.   
A young woman sitting in the armchair in the back of the room or on the cushioned windowsill and practicing needlework or with a sketchbook on her laps and a pen in her hand. She was there. Beautiful as always. And she noticed him staring and looked up. "Hey Honey." she smiled.   
Her voice was clear and present. It was there. He heard it. He heard it like he did so many times before.   
Only when she didn't answer his greeting and the image of her just froze he realized again what reality was. His gentle smile fell. However, he could still hear her voice. 

He lifted his weight from the door frame and continued to walk down the hallway. Was he going mad? He heard her voice sometimes, he felt her palm on his shoulder sometimes. Sometimes she was alive again. Alive and next to him. But she couldn't be. She was gone. She has been gone since May. Of course the month she passes would be May, he thought as he walked. It had been her petname he gave her even before their marriage. May. 

His palms, long lost the softness and warmth they once had in his youth, palms his May loved to hold, caressed the wooden railing of the stairs, which color was flaking off. He climbed up the stairs. With his 81 years weighing on his shoulders his legs weren't at their best steadiness and definitely not at their fastet. How many times did he walk these stairs up and down since he housed in here? How many times did he peck her a little kiss before he headed off to his office? How many times did he tell his children to not slide down the railing and yet adored it when they did? 

He continued his way, walking through the hallway upstairs now.   
The first door stood wide open. Elizabeth's. She barely lived in it, being a young twenty-four year old married woman when they moved into Nevis and only spent time in that room when visiting her parents with her husband and own children.   
"Papa!" he heard his little girl's sweet voice ring in his ears as her image beamed at him from her desk, with stacks of books around her. She was a friend to science. Understood it and enjoyed it. If she had been a boy, he knew, she would've grown into a professional scientist or mathematician for she truly had a gift. But it was never to be. It left him thinking about this hierarchy of the males getting a good education if the family could afford it, go to work and earn money while the females were left with the simple education of how to be a housewife and care for children they gave their husbands. Elizabeth had so many open doors to a successful career that were closed just because she was a girl.  
But it was too late anyways. She was gone too. She was his first baby to see the light of the world and the first to close her eyes forever from that light.  
It had been a horrendous message from their son-in-law when he told them Elizabeth had passed away. Mary and he spent most nights after that message holding each other and weeping. Especially Mary was stabbed through the heart. She had never expected, never imagined she would outlive any of her children. And he? He didn't either and whenever Mary was lying in their bed limply, only her shoulders jerking from her sobs he felt helpless. Helpless and useless for all he was able to do was embrace her.  
58\. His baby girl would've been 58 now.

He took a shaky breath and turned away, following the hallway to the next door. The door to Fanny's room. His fingertips brushed over the metallic door handle before he gave it a gentle push and the door opened. Immediately an old paper flew to the floor, falling directly in front of his feet. It must've hung on the door, he assumed as he looked down on it.  
It was a drawing. Fanny was an artistic girl. Like her mother. Actually, Fanny still was artistic but it is long ago she found time to draw.   
James examined the drawing. The pencil led was faded and pale but the motif new. He had never seen this drawing before. It was a portrait of him and Mary together that Fanny did from memory and without reference, he figured, because he and his wife never posed for a portrait together.  
"Mr. James A. Hamilton & Mrs. Mary M. Hamilton" he could still read the smudged words under the portrait and even further down, in the very corner it said: "Fanny H., 1829".

His lips twitched into a tender smile, his face wrinkling. He wondered why she never dared to show this to him and Mary. It was beautiful and absolutely realistic. It almost looked like a photograph.   
He turned the paper around and found a little note in the middle of the paper. 

"Happy Birthday, Papa! You are the best. I love you. -Your affectionate daughter, Fanny"

His hands began to tremble as he straightened the paper. She never gave it to him as a birthday gift. But he also never asked for birthday gifts from his children or his wife. They were gift enough for him. Perhaps that was the reason why Fanny didn't give him this drawing. He didn't know. All he knew was that upon reading the little message, his sight became blurrier than it already was and his throat felt tight. And, of course, that he loved Fanny incredibly much.  
After Elizabeth's death now Fanny was the eldest, and after her mother's death so recently ago, she did her best to care for him. She, his only son Alexander and his third daughter, named after her mother, Mary.  
He wiped his sleeve over his face, stopping any tears from falling. He took a last look at the portrait, folded it with care, kissed the paper and put it in his pocket. 

James continued his path through Nevis and looked into every former room of his children. In Alexander's he'd spent some long evenings, sitting on his son's bed and listening to what he wrote for school and help him improve, like his father had done with him before.   
In Mary's he'd always stumble over a doll lying in the middle of the room and in Angelica's he'd spent one or another night cuddling with her and reading to her or come up with a story himself. Angelica was much like her namesake: a lively child, a musical talent, a kind and generous girl with great humour and social skills. The only difference was that his Angelica was not behaving boyish anytime, while his sister would do whatever Philip would do.  
But both of his beloved Angelicas weren't around anymore aswell.   
His sister wasn't around since 1801. She was around physically, but mentally she was in another world, another reality. Her reality. She went insane how people would say. To him she was never insane. Just confused and trapped in her own dreamworld, in her own childhood.   
She passed away three years after their mother, at last released from her sufferings.  
His youngest babe that he named in honor of his poor, beloved sister, passed away just a year ago. Five years after Elizabeth.  
At least she is reunited with her mother and elder sister, he told himself.

Suddenly he stood before the master bedroom. He caressed his hand over the white painted wood. So many memories are behind this door. Behind this door she was still alive.   
"Shh! You'll wake the children!" he heard her voice again. He turned around and saw the empty hallway. But slowly he could make out the image of her and him close together. His younger self was pressing her to the wall and eagerly kissing her around her neck.   
"They're tightly asleep.", he heard his own voice reply, "I've been waiting for this. You've been driving me crazy all week.".  
The image, the memory, disappeared just as quickly as it came.   
A little smile hushed over his face, knowing exactly what those kisses ended up leading to. Intentionally.   
Recounting what he just saw, in all the rooms his smile faded and he placed a hand to his wrinkly forehead. Was he having a fever or did his mind start to trap him in the past? Why did he see memories that had long passed and were forgotten, why did he hear voices he hasn't heard in years... perhaps he was just longing for his former life to return. To be a young man again, with all his charms and handsome looks. To have his beloved angel of wife back. To see his Elizabeth and Angelica again. To have his parents back, his sisters and his brothers.  
He swallowed back the tears. After all the losses he has experienced yet he didn't expect to still have tears left to shed. He gathered himself again and put his trembling hand on the door handle to the master bedroom, pressing it down and opening the way into it.  
The big bed was empty, just what it felt like now when he slept in it. Alone. The other side, her side, still reserved for her. Getting colder with every passing day. He crossed the room over to her vanity. Her brush and accessories lying there the same way they had since May. He didn't touch any of the things that belonged to her. He didn't want to. It kept him in the illusion that she is still here and not multiple feet under the ground. 

On her vanity he discovered a little box with a ribbon around it, tied in a bow at the top. He examined it further and picked it up. It was light and it seemed almost empty. But something told him it wasn't as empty as it felt. So he sat down on her stool that belonged to her vanity as well and began to slowly unwrap the box.  
Then he opened it. In it was an ordinary pocket watch. Or so he thought. He carefully took it out, the metal almost ice cold in his palm, and pressed the tiny button to open the lid. On the inside of the lid was a miniature painting of them. Together. In the clothes they wore on their wedding day. Under it, engraved in the metal were their initials. J&M.  
He stared at it perplexed, not understanding why she had this on her vanity and so neatly presented as a present. In hope of finding answers he looked into the box again and found a piece of paper in it, folded neatly. Curious yet also scared of what it could contain he unfolded it with care.

"To my beloved husband, my dearest James.  
A new pocket watch, for your old is not functioning properly no more, with a little reminder of our love for each other in it.  
I consider myself truly the most blessed girl in the world to have you as a husband, reminding me every day a new of your affection and genuine love for me.

Happy 59th Anniversary, Darling.  
I love you still the same as when I first met you. And even more.

Forever yours  
Mary "

The box fell to the floor.   
He clenched the paper to his chest, fighting his emotions of pain and sadness, squeezing his eyes. But it was no use. He fell on his knees overwhelmed with grief and let the terrible sob that was building up in his chest go. It sounded more like a scream though. The same kind of scream he made when his elder brother died, when his father died, when his younger brother died, when his mother died, when his sisters died, when his daughters died, when she died. Everyone he loved so dearly.  
The pocket watch lied in his palm as he clenched it. He couldn't bear it anymore. To fight back the tears and sobs. To play the strong widower when he was so weak and broken without her.   
He cried bitter tears, the ache in his chest unbearable and getting worse with every sob. They didn't get to celebrate their 59th Anniversary. Though October was approaching, it was still months away. She didn't live up to it. And yet she thought of a present for him so early on. And it was the best present she could've given him for this year. Not the pocket watch itself, but the words in her note to him. 

"Forever yours" she wrote. She had vowed him the same in front of the Lord, when marrying him with a fond, affectionate smile over her lips.

"Forever yours" he repeated with a shaking voice through the tears, vowing her the same, pressing the note to himself. He will always be her's. "Mary" he hicced through his grief, as if she could hear him and would come to his comfort. 

"I love you, Hamilton" her voice echoed in his ears once again.

He looked up with glassy eyes, hoping to see his angel. But all he saw was an empty bed. He never thought he would say and think that, but he wished for his days to be over. All he wanted was to have her back, hold her in his embrace and never let go. Every passing day without her was blank and he didn't see a reason in continuing to live that way.

"Papa?" Fanny walked past the master bedroom before taking a quick step back noticing the door standing open.   
"Papa!" she rushed to him, seeing him on the floor, crying. She kneed down to him and put her hand on his shoulder, stroking it in comfort. "Papa, what happened? Did you trip?Are you hurt? Should I call for a doctor?".

"I'm fine, my dear." he managed to say. "I just remembered what a wonderful, astonishing women your mother was. Nothing else.".

Fanny smiled tightly at him before wrapping her arms around him and pulling him into her embrace, where she let him cry.

**Author's Note:**

> In May 1869 James A. Hamilton was left a widower after his wife Mary Morris Hamilton passed away. 
> 
> Nevis is a huge house James built in 1835 for his family and him in Irvington, NY, that he named in honor of his father's birthplace. This house exists still but is nowadays a physics and biological research facility operated by Columbia University. 
> 
> This fic is historical fiction and not accurate.
> 
> This is the first time I post something on here hahaha


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